G&T News logo in the style of the 90s BBC 9 O'Clock News titlesForget Harry and Meghan, this is the real story. After nearly 17 years of writing on Ganymede & Titan – I started when I was a useless 21 year old, and I’m now a useless 38 year old – it’s time for me to hang up my steaming moon boots, mumble something about you all being people I met, and say goodbye.

Before we see a digitalised recording of my final moments, there’s going to be a lengthy tribute, interspersed with poetry readings, read by… hang on, “digitalised”? That sounds fairly archaic now, doesn’t it? And if the material is digitalised, why are there analogue tape artefacts when Lister fast-forwards the tape?

You really aren’t going to miss this kind of bullshit from me, are you?

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Set to Rights: The Teaching Room featured image

After over a year's gap, welcome back to Set to Rights, the series where I look at Red Dwarf's sets in mind-numbing detail. And having already looked at some thrilling wall sections and the Captain's Office, we turn to what might initially seem an unpromising avenue for spectacular revelations: the Teaching Room in Series 1.

I think, however, you may be surprised. Because telling the story of this set leads us into some rather interesting areas which I don't think have been examined before. As ever, we don't have the paperwork handy to be able to check any of this: instead, we have to do some deduction, some guesswork, and leave some questions unanswered.

With that health warning, let's take another trip through early Red Dwarf - as ever with these articles, in order of recording date rather than broadcast.

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The G&T Christmas Message 2019 featured image

Hang on, I'm writing the G&T Christmas Message for the first time in 13 years? I guess I'd better do some Christmas song references. So: I'm giving Santa a Pikachu this Christmas, I just can’t wait till I am sitting on the bog, and... erm, I got nothing.

Danny, Robert and Doug on the set for the Red Dwarf SpecialMoving swiftly on, then. The last 12 months have been rather surprising in that things have actually happened in the land of Dwarf this year, unlike the mildly disappointing 30th anniversary. Not fast, get there in the end, etc. The biggest news was obviously the Red Dwarf Special, from Danny tweeting a picture of the readthrough, followed a week later by its erm, the official announcement. It perhaps seems unfair to talk about the production of the show never running smoothly - it's not like there are fansites examining the minutiae of Still Open All Hours audience recordings - but there was a distinct air of familiarity when one of the two audience recordings was postponed until next year. Well it probably is déjà vu, it sounds like it. Luckily, the other recording went off fine - bar Norman Lovett having a cold - and 2020 will hopefully see the second recording rescheduled. If not, at least we can look forward to Chris Barrie shooting linking footage vaguely in-character in 13 years time.

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G&TV logoLong before Paula Yates invited people On the Bed, Emma Freud was doing the same on Pillow Talk, part of ITV’s late night programming Night Network. And who did she have on the bed in 1987? None other than a certain Chris Barrie, who spends much of the interview looking fairly uncomfortable. They should have just had sex in multiple different positions and had done with it.

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G&TV logoThis month on G&TV, we go back in time to 1994, and take a look at Robert Llewellyn on Australian talk show Denton. Or, considering that the person who uploaded this video thinks that Llewellyn played a character called “Kryton”, we should say we’re going to take a look at Ribbed Sue Ellen on Australian talk show Dented.

Unfortunately, the above shitassery may come back to bite me, as while I might know my Krytons from my Krytens, I have never heard of either Denton, or indeed Andrew Denton himself. This piece has a bit of background on both him and the show; it seems like it really was rather good. And sure enough, the Llewellyn segment is pretty entertaining.

A few thoughts.

  • Robert saying that it’s “rather tragic” that Andrew Denton knows the difference between R2D2 and C3PO is an interesting reminder that this stuff wasn’t front-centre of popular culture in 1994.
  • I have to admit, I winced at the Douglas Bader funny walks section. Somehow, reading that bit in The Man In The Rubber Mask never seemed particularly troubling. Once you combine it with the visual, it becomes a bit of a different thing. (Though the fact that he combines this with the story about Doug Naylor’s prosthetic leg – where Robert himself becomes the butt of the joke – kinda helps.)
  • Hearing the anecdote again about Robert getting an electric shock by the cigarette lighter in his finger reminds me of when that footage of his first day of recording finally showed up on The Bodysnatcher Collection. Did someone at GNP have to sit through watching multiple takes of Robert screaming in pain to find the usable take?
  • The moment towards the end of the interview where Robert talks about his girlfriend sleeping with somebody else makes me grateful my job doesn’t involve bearing my soul on national television.
  • The ending I won’t spoil. But it’s very funny.

Anyway, the whole thing is well worth a watch. And as for Andrew Denton himself? In August this year he finished another talk show called Andrew Denton’s Interview. Or possibly Argue Dental’s IOU or something, I’m going to leave now, bye.

I sometimes wonder what is wrong with me.

Come back in time 30 years with me, to Manchester. (I’ll have to use the Series VII Time Drive rather than the VI version, unless I’m willing to take the bus up there.) Red Dwarf Series 2 finished shooting on the 3rd July 1988, with Queeg. The first audience recording session for Series III was on the 5th September 1989 – although there must have been location shooting before this date. Regardless – in the 13 months between those dates, Red Dwarf underwent a great number of changes.

Some of those changes we still don’t really know an awful lot about. For instance, Rob and Doug became producers on the show, but the conversations which lead to that remain largely a mystery. Still, one of the most immediately obvious changes came from the ousting of Paul Montague as production designer… and the instatement of Mel Bibby. And the on-screen effect this had on the show has been endlessly talked about, at least.

But my mind keeps wandering. Because those sets for Series 1 and 2 would surely have been put into storage for any potential Series 3. And once Series III was finally commissioned, and Mel Bibby joined the team… there came the decision made to create entirely new sets. And believe me, I’ve stared at those sets long enough to know that they really were entirely new.

Old bunkroom from Queeg New bunkroom from Timeslides

Which means: those Series 1 and 2 sets would be surplus to requirements… and dumped. Exactly where, and exactly when, I have absolutely no idea. But at some point between July 1988 and September 1989, they were gone. Possibly sitting in a skip outside BBC North West.

And just imagine. Imagine if you had loved those first two series at the time. And imagine you found out exactly where and exactly when those sets were dumped. And imagine you could have gone and rescued those sets. And imagine that suddenly, you owned that famous grey bunkroom.

Because you’d be the owner of one of the most amazing pieces of Red Dwarf memorabilia in existence. And – give it a few years, maybe – one of the most valuable. If only you’d known exactly what day to go scouting around a certain bit of Manchester. If only you’d known. You could have made thousands of pounds from it in the mid-nineties. Or – if you’re more sentimental – you could pop down to your garage any time you wanted, and lie on Lister’s bunk.

All you needed to know is the date, and the place. It was there for the taking. If only you’d known.

I sometimes wonder what is wrong with me.

Over the years we’ve written loads of stupid articles here on G&T. But one thing we’ve never got round to is a full list of repeats Red Dwarf has had over the years. So if you want that, you should visit the blog of Christopher Wickham of this very parish, and peruse The Red Dwarf BBC Broadcasts Guide.

Still, one self-confessed omission from that article is anything to do with cable/satellite repeats and the like. I don’t intend to provide a full list of these, because while I might be a moron, I am not an absolute fucking moron. It seems worth asking one question, however: when was the first repeat of Red Dwarf in the UK which was not on the BBC?

Before researching this article, my massively naive guess was: around 1992. UK Gold launched on the 1st November of that year; I’d just assumed that repeats of Red Dwarf had been part of the channel from the very beginning. But then, I never had access to the channel back then; the first time I ever experienced the wonders of multichannel television was in the late 90s, when we got NTL analogue cable, and we couldn’t afford any of the extra pay channels. Instead, I whiled away my days cheating the receiver into giving me 10 minutes of free Television X. Believe me, when you’re 18, 10 minutes is all you need.

Anyway, there is a very easy way of telling when Red Dwarf was first shown on UK Gold, and it doesn’t involve doing any hard research. Just ask people on Twitter, and get them to do that hard work for you. And here is the answer from Jonathan Dent, cross-referencing the Guardian’s TV listings and this Usenet post. The repeats of Red Dwarf on UK Gold started with a double-bill of The End and Future Echoes, and premiered on the 5th October 1997 at 11:05pm.

UK Gold listing

What I find especially interesting about all this is that it coincides with the 1997 resurgence of Red Dwarf, which started with the first broadcast of Tikka to Ride 10 months previously, along with the programme’s first Radio Times cover. A resurgence which many of us look back on with mixed feelings, to say the least – but very much part of the second wave of the show and its fandom. Being one of those fans who got into Red Dwarf during the 1994 BBC2 repeat season, I had no idea that I was already watching the show way before it got its very first non-terrestrial UK showing. It’s all so much later than the history I had made up entirely by myself in my own head.

Now, would it be too much to hope for that this first broadcast on UK Gold was captured by someone on video? Maybe even with the accompanying – and presumably quite excitable – continuity announcement?

G&TV logoBeing born in 1981 in the UK, there is a certain… comfort I have from watching Red Dwarf. Despite being set three million years into the future, I understand everything. Not only with jokes about Eastbourne or Topic bars; the visual language of Red Dwarf is warm and familiar. A cross between The Young Ones and Chock-A-Block.

And part of that visual language is how BBC2 looked and felt in the 90s. Those classic idents, a bold, chunky 2. Whizzing across the screen as a toy car, flipping in the air like a fluffy dog, or being blown up by fireworks. Despite only actually launching during the initial broadcast of Series IV, for an entire generation, Red Dwarf became inseparable from those wonderful pieces of film. (Many, many years later, I got to play with those idents on air on BBC Two for real… and that toy car ident became the most metaphorical ident in the world.)

But today isn’t a day for comfort. At least, not for me. Because a big part of Red Dwarf‘s story was its overseas sales, particularly to PBS stations in America. It’s something which is so easy to forget from a UK perspective: that there is a whole language of television connected with Dwarf that I never got to see.

So let’s take a look at… Mike Frisbie’s Sci-Fi Friday Night, on Iowa Public Television. Starting in the early 90s, this was a weekly line-up of various science fiction shows, including Doctor Who, Blake’s 7, and… oh, hello, Red Dwarf. And each show was introduced by Mike Frisbie in his own inimitable style.

Here’s what he had to say about Bodyswap in 1996:

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While we’re all working on bigger things for G&T behind the scenes, it’s left to me to keep the front page updated. And what better way to do that than foist some unpleasant off-cuts from an old article onto you?

Here is your plate of raw offal, then. A couple of months back I posted this piece, on the reshoots required for Series 1 to put Holly in-vision. There was one thing I was never quite able to nail down, however, and going after it seemed like an annoying diversion in an already faintly annoying article, so I pretended not to notice and hoped everyone else would happily ignore it as well. Still, perhaps you’re cleverer than me, and can figure out the below mystery. And it concerns a very important scene in the development of Holly.

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